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Four strikes and it's out…

7 August 2004

THE travails of a lunar rock found in the deserts of Oman have been laid bare – it seems to have been battered at least three times by meteorites while it was still on the moon, before a fourth strike sent it flying towards Earth.

Edwin Gnos of the University of Berne in Switzerland and his colleagues found the fist-sized rock, named SaU 169, in 2002. The researchers used isotopic analysis of different minerals in the rock to chart its history, and to explore the periods when it was exposed to cosmic rays. They also compared it to rocks returned by …